my name is earl

That was a great TV show. Too bad it was cancelled. Anyway, I believe we may have Hurricane Earl to thank for some light, intermittent rain today. Just enough to wet the deck, and whet our appetite for more rain.

Today’s workout consisted of making, and drinking, hot chocolate. Maybe in a little while I’ll crank out some pushups. Does that count as a workout? Does it count as more of a workout, if I announce that I’m doing a 10.75 mile run tomorrow? Or can I only get credit for tomorrow’s run, after I’ve actually DONE tomorrow’s run? This whole “personal responsibility” thing – no fun at all, just no fun at all.

On the domestic hearth and home front – as if I write about anything else, really, recluse that I am – we had an adventure with indoor toxic waste.

See, this house used to be heated by an oil furnace that vented up a chimney. When Sweetpea bought this house, the woodstove also vented in the chimney, which if you know anything about Basic Household Safety is a terrible idea, as one itty bitty spark from the woodstove could spark up fumes from the furnace and BOOM, House Go Bye Bye. So before I ever showed up on the scene, that particular problem was fixed.

Last year, when we added on to our house, we…

- yanked the oil furnace

- replaced it with a Budaris propane-fired water heater thingy, which vents directly through the wall of the basement

- which now meant that we had a chimney we no longer needed, so the builders yanked the top of it off it as we were replacing the roof on the original part of the house

- but they left the inside-the-house portion of the chimney. So we now have this fugly thing adorning our living/dining area:

A cinderblock chimney faced with 3/8” thick fake brick.

So I’m vacuuming today, and sucking up the cobwebs that tend to adhere to this uneven surface, and I say sweetly to my love, “my love, you know, we should pry off this fake brick crap, and put tile up instead”. Kevin being Kevin, he went and got the hammer and a small crowbar, and started in. He’s like that.

After a little while, once he realized that a crowbar was only going to get a few of the looser pieces off, he went on The Google to do some research.

Ever heard of a little product called asbestos? oops. Turns out that a lot of pre-late-1970’s fake brick stuff has asbestos in it. Huh. Who knew.

But THEN we realized, hell, why pry the brick off? We.Don’t.Need.The.Chimney.Period. At all. So our new plan involves sledgehammers and the complete removal of the whole thing. Yippee!

Oh and yeah, we know where we can get the bits he chipped off tested to see if they’ve got asbestos in ‘em.